Sydney Chaffee – TedxBeaconStreet – November 2017
“Never forget that justice is what LOVE looks like in public” – Dr. Cornel West.
Sydney talks about how education can be a tool for social justice. How education and teachers should aim to empower students to articulate their OWN opinions and no coerce students into agreeing with us. That we become thought partners with students and help them to have tricky conversations about social justice and activism with each other and with adults in their lives.
Sydney talks about schools teaching problem-solving, critical thinking, collaboration, perseverance and the most important historical context. That by intertwining these events we explore history with our students and that we can show them that history is ongoing and we are potential players in living history.
To do this, we need to change the way we think about rebellion in our students and instead think of them thoughtfully pushing back as a sign we are doing something right. That sometimes teachers will be the ones that teachers will push against, our systems, our assumptions and our complacency. To do that we need to stop thinking of Education as a set of nouns and instead think of education as a series of verbs that serve as an engine to “drive” our path forward in justice.
The biggest part of Sydney’s talk is that students deserve just as much respect and trust as we would give adults. We need to give them the tools to express themselves and be prepared for that expression and that learning can be messy.